CEREMONY

I think people may be confused about the differences or relationships among ceremonies, rituals, and forms. And what does all that have to do with vow?

Forms are well-named. They provide a shape for practice, but they don’t determine what goes into that shape. We fill them in with who we are. We talk about concrete forms, the scaffolding into which the concrete is poured. But you could pour jello into those forms, or frogs or whatever  you like. They will be held in that shape. Of course, not everything can hold that defined shape once the forms are removed. This is also true for us, in our everyday lives. If our vow is strong, we can keep our bodhisattva intention, even when we do not have the forms of the Zendo to hold us up. 

Rituals are practices that enact and carry forward the traditions that connect us back through all the ancestors, all the cultures that Zen has moved through. Each culture has contributed to the rituals associated with Zen. To enact those rituals, bowing, offering incense, chanting, is to recognize our connection with all that has come before us to bring the dharma to us in our own time and place. We in the West create new rituals that reflect our respect for this practice and its ancestors and teachings. Not every ritual is spiritual, but every ritual conveys some intention and gathers our attention. You may have a ritual cup of tea in the morning, or a ritual warmup before your run; baseball pitchers famously have special rituals before pitching. A ritual differs from a habit in this quality of intention and attention. 

Ceremony is a transformational ritual. It is a public expression of vow. Through it, we are utterly changed. In a wedding ceremony, two single people become transformed into what we would call “not two,” that is, both bride and groom, and a married couple. It is a fundamental identity shift. In the precepts program, we have a ceremony that in Japanese tradition is called jukai. In this ceremony, we become transformed in our public vows. In the Japanese tradition in which we both trained participants receive a new, Buddhist name, recognizing the transformation in our identity. We have formally and publicly acknowledged that our feet are on the Buddhist path. When we ordain as priests, there is another ceremony, in which we receive a new Buddhist name, new clothes (robes) and new bowls, and we make public our bodhisattva vows. In a college graduation ceremony, a student is transformed into an adult. This identity shift may take a while to process, but it is absolute. Ceremonies are not reversible. In a funeral, a person is transformed once more, from corpse to departed being, as we acknowledge the dropping of body and mind in a formal way. We too are transformed by the ceremony of a memorial or funeral, in ways we could not explain. Where there is no transformation, what you have is a ritual, rather than a ceremony. 

Ceremonies may be formal, structured and bound by tradition, or they may even be impromptu. Many weddings in the 60’s were like this. And recently my nephew got married by texting his friends to meet him at the lakefront at sunrise the next morning, for a makeshift service provided by one of my sister’s therapy clients. Then everyone went for waffles. Despite the casual format he still ended up a married man, with a wife, part of a couple. 

In Zen, the use of ceremonies varies widely. In large temples in Japan, there are many ceremonies, some as elaborate as high mass at the Vatican. Tibetan Buddhists, too, love rich, ornate ceremonies. Perhaps if you lived in such an austere, challenging, often bleak environment as the Himalayas you would love the color and music and movement of them too. Yet in many Zen centers, especially here in the west, ceremonies are minimal or virtually non-existent. I never saw a single ceremony at Joko’s Zen center. Westerners, it seems, have a real antipathy to ceremonies, and particularly to religious ceremonies. 

I understand Joko’s wish to create a practice center for contemporary Western practitioners in everyday lives. She stripped away much of the cultural accretions to focus cleanly and entirely on Zazen, sesshins, and daisan. She wasn’t even convinced that a Zen center was a good idea. Of course, she herself had experienced the full-blown Japanese form of Zen training, and participated in the full slate of ceremonies at Zen Center Los Angeles, headed up by Maezumi Roshi. She had nine years in residence there, and mastered all of the forms and ceremonies. She just abandoned them when it became obvious that they did not serve her sangha in San Diego. Without monastic residents, it was almost impossible to train people in the proper ways of doing them. 

But in a sense, I think she may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Ceremonies have profound, complex qualities, and serve many purposes, both in the lives of individuals and the life of a community. Without them, the immense transformational moments of our lives go unrecognized, uncelebrated, unwitnessed and unappreciated, and a spiritual community can become just a club of interested individuals. 

Dimensions of ceremony

Buddha: the expression of buddha nature, the transformation that more deeply connects and commits us personally to the Bodhisattva vow

Dharma: the teachings conveyed in the ceremony, the teachings of the precepts, the bodhisattva vow, and the connection through the teachings to our Zen ancestors

Sangha: ceremonies are very important in the life of the community. They bring us together and celebrate the transformations not only of the celebrant, but of our community of practice. 

Ceremonies as non-ordinary states, outside of time and space, yet very obviously in them, in the most ordinary way. 

Heightened and also numbed sensory awareness. A sense of standing outside of time. If asked a question, the person has to come from a long way to answer it. If it is a complex question, the person can’t answer it at all. A simple question, such as Are you hungry, may be unanswerable. Things seem to happen very, very slowly, but also with astonishing speed. Suddenly you are in front of some officiant, making some responses to something vast that is wheeling across the cosmos. It doesn’t matter if the officiant is the pope or just your best buddy from college. Or whether the ceremony is witnessed by two people or thousands.